Fred Meyer was out of bulk raisins yesterday (how is that even possible!?), so I opted for an alternative: dried figs! I haven’t had them in awhile so I figured I’d enjoy the change of pace as well. I cut up one dried fig in my steel cut oats, almond milk, water, cinnamon, and Maranatha. I can’t remember if I used chocolate almond milk…

I know, the plastic abounds…supposedly I’m poisoning myself with pthalates and BPA by nuking my oats in plastic, and eating hot food with the plastic spoon isn’t good either. The office doesn’t have a kitchen, everyone uses plastic, and I hate seeing it used only once when it is quite durable. I wash it in the dishwasher and take it back to the office for reuse, but I can’t say that everyone is on that reuse train.

Worky worky, and eventually lunchy lunchy. I’ve been enjoying having more fruits and veggies with lunch over the last week 🙂 Today I had one slice ww bread with 1/2 wedge LCL, once slice turkey, and overflowing green leaf lettuce. I also ate celery & carrot sticks, some grapes, and half a Fuji. Yay!

I can’t believe how long paperwork can take sometimes. Totally not a productive use of time to spend two hours preparing applications and getting them in the mail. Can’t wait til I have an assistant!

Today is Chris’ dad’s birthday, and I knew we were heading to the Old Spaghetti Factory, so I did a little sleuthing on their menu and nutritional content. Oy vey! It really is amazing how many calories are in the average portion of pasta served with typical meat sauce, and when you get into specialties like vegetarian lasagna, mizithra & browned butter pasta….watch out! Details of what I chose to eat below…

Eventually I ate the other half of the apple and the rest of the grapes.

We left for Hillsboro around 5, stopped at Target for a birthday card, and met the parents at OSG. I figured out I could have the Minestrone Soup (60 cals for the cup), most of the Pasta Marinara (560 for the whole serving), and a piece of bread (~80 cals/slice), without wrecking my day’s intake. The soup was good…probably the highlight of my meal actually. My pasta was just meh; could’ve used more herbs and a fresher taste, but I still ate about 2/3 of it.

Dinner went pretty well, Kurt seemed to be jovial, and I didn’t let him get away with sneaking under the birthday radar. When the waitress asked him what kind of ice cream he wanted, I made sure to tell her it was his birthday. I just thought they’d throw a candle in it, but they had our whole dining room sing to him! Oops, way to embarass the in-laws!! (Note, Chris and I aren’t married, but we pretty much refer to e/o’s families as the in-laws, and they pretty much consider us married.)

Once home I played with the LB and got suited up to go to the gym. I thought I’d do cardio first, but all the good stair mills were taken so I headed upstairs to do legs. Leg press, calf raise, dead lift, kick-squats, kayak-abs, inner & outer thigh and I was done. Those kick-squats are from fitnessmagazine.com and really get my heart rate going!

Downstairs to cardio and all the machines were free 🙂 Yay. I like the newer stair mills b/c I can customize the intervals for a perfect workout. And, whew, I was a fountain o’ sweat tonight. It was great!

I tried to talk myself out of eating anything when I got home, but hunger nudged me to eat a little. I cut a dried fig in half and spread 1/2 tbsp of Maranatha between the two. Mmmmmmm…..

Speaking of Maranatha, I just bought a new jar and noticed a little contest mentioned on the tag: a yoga giveaway! Go to www.maranathafoods.com to enter for one of 37 chances to win a great prize!

Holy shit, I just had to visit The Olive Garden online to see if they have nutritional content on there, and yes they do. I say, holy shit again. When I would eat one breadstick, one serving of salad, and a lunch sized fettucine alfredo I was consuming like 1300 calories, almost 80 grams of fat, and over 3,000 mg of sodium! :shocked: Crap, sometimes knowledge is a curse, no? Now I don’t know if I can fathom eating fettucine alfredo ever again knowing that. I guess it will be once I’m at my goal weight and have a few calories to spare in the budget, and I eat only part of a lunch serving. I can’t believe the salad alone has like 350 calories and 27 grams of fat per serving! And they have two low-fat options available, FYI.

With that glorious over-load of information I leave you. I hope you all had a great Monday and are ready for a kickin’ Tuesday 🙂 Ciao!